Sun Life Financial Inc. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Sun Life's earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. Our earnings release and the slides for today's call are available on the investor relations section of our website at sunlife.com. We will begin today's call with opening remarks from Kevin Strain, President and Chief Executive Officer. Following Kevin, Tim Deacon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will present the financial results for the quarter. After the prepared remarks, we will move to the question and answer portion of the call. Other members of management are also available to answer your questions this morning. Turning to slide two, I draw your attention to the cautionary language regarding the use of forward-looking statements and non-IFRS financial measures, which form part of today's remarks. As noted in the slides, forward-looking statements may be rendered inaccurate by subsequent events.

With that, I'll now turn things over to Kevin.

Thanks, Natalie. Good morning, everyone. Turning to slide five, we delivered strong second quarter results with double-digit underlying EPS growth, reflecting higher earnings across our businesses and continued progress against our strategic priorities. Strength in Canada, Asia, and U.S. all contributed to growth, while asset management continues to build momentum. Underlying net income was CAD 1.12 billion, up from CAD 1.02 billion last year. Underlying EPS was CAD 2.02, up 13% over the prior year. Underlying return on equity was 19.1%. Reported net income was CAD 1.01 billion, compared with CAD 716 million a year ago. Strong protection earnings were driven by growth in all insurance business groups. Canada delivered record results reflecting strong business growth and favorable experience. In Asia, earnings increased from continued business growth. In the U.S., health and risk solutions continue to perform well, while in-force management delivered strong earnings driven by favorable investments and insurance results.

In Sun Life Asset Management, SLC Management earnings increased year-over-year, supported by improved fundraising and deployment momentum, while MFS delivered consistent earnings. We also delivered strong top-line performance across the organization. Insurance sales increased 20%, driven by growth in Asia and continued strength in the U.S. Asset management net flows and net wealth sales improved by CAD 16.3 billion, supported by strong private credit fundraising and a large mandate win in our Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management business. The scale and brand recognition from this mandate amplifies our growth strategy for asset management in India. At MFS, outflows remained elevated, reflecting continued industry-wide pressure on active U.S. equity managers. Our capital position remains strong. We ended the quarter with a LICAT ratio of 145% and holding company cash of CAD 2.3 billion, reflecting the strength and resilience of our business.

During the quarter, we renewed our normal course issuer bid to repurchase up to 10 million common shares and began purchasing shares under the program. Our strong capital position and cash generation continue to provide flexibility to invest in our business while returning capital to shareholders. Overall, this was a strong quarter that reflected the strength of our purpose, our disciplined execution, our business growth across key markets, and the resilience of our diversified model. Turn to slide six. Let me touch on a few areas where we're seeing notable momentum. First, our digital transformation journey. We made significant progress this quarter. At an enterprise level, we recently announced our founding membership in an AI consortium alongside Scotiabank, Telus, and Lightworks. The AI consortium is a collaborative effort to build the infrastructure, governance, and controls needed to deploy AI responsibly at scale in regulated industries.

It is helping us accelerate AI adoption in a way that's consistent with the governance standards clients and regulators expect while sharing costs with other major regulated Canadian institutions. In addition, to help technology architecture teams make informed decisions faster, we launched a new proprietary agentic AI platform. It has already freed up time by replacing the manual process of trade-off analysis with structured, data-driven, and scalable decision making. Beyond these enterprise initiatives, we're deploying AI solutions that deliver tangible benefits for clients and advisors. In Indonesia, we launched AI in our contact centers to enhance the client experience service through using advanced routing, analytics, and monitoring capabilities to improve responsiveness and first call resolution. More broadly across Asia, we also launched tools in our agency channel that accelerate advisor onboarding and support higher quality service through real-time coaching, strengthening client interactions, and enhancing the onboarding experience.

In Canada, we enhanced My Sun Life app with integrated health capabilities, creating a more connected digital experience and bringing health benefits, services, and support together in one place. We also launched an AI-powered concierge for SLFD advisors, enabling faster access to information and the ability to address complex inquiries, helping advisors spend more time focused on advice and client relationships. Our responsible approach to AI is helping us improve client experiences, operate more efficiently, and scale our businesses while keeping clients at the center. Turn to asset and wealth management. We've now completed our first full quarter of Sun Life Asset Management operating as a unified platform. We've retained strong talent, continue to deliver strong results for our clients, and remain focused on realizing the full potential of our combined capabilities.

Our strength in alternatives and our local expertise in new markets continue to be a driver of growth for Sun Life Asset Management. Crescent closed the largest direct lending in its history with US $10.8 billion of investable capital, reflecting the strength of its platform and investor relationships. Crescent and Pantheon also closed a US $3.2 billion private credit continuation vehicle in the first half of the year, marking the largest transactions in the private credit secondaries market. In India, Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management won a large fixed income mandate for a government sponsor, doubling their assets under management to $113 billion USD. At MFS, while we continue to experience outflows, our active ETFs continue to gain traction, generating inflows more than triple the prior year, with AUM having now doubled since the start of 2026 to US $3 billion.

In our Canadian business, wealth sales increased 60%, supported by record defined contribution sales, strong rollover activity, and higher mutual fund sales. These examples show the scale and momentum we're building in asset management and the breadth of solutions we're able to provide to a range of clients. Looking to Asia, momentum accelerated across the region. Sales increased 20% to CAD 875 million, reflecting broad-based growth across the region. Hong Kong continued to perform well, with sales increasing 20%, driven by growth across all distribution channels and a 28% increase in advisors to nearly 4,000. Indonesia was another standout this quarter. Sales increased 69%, demonstrating the ongoing success of our expanded CIMB partnership. We also saw strong growth in India and Malaysia, reflecting attractive market conditions and solid execution by our local teams. What stands out to me is the breadth of growth. It's coming from multiple markets and multiple channels.

That's important because it creates a more resilient, higher quality growth profile over time. As a result, total CSM now exceeds CAD 7 billion, up over 90% since the adoption of IFRS 17 and providing a strong foundation for future earnings growth. In the U.S., we delivered strong sales results and continued to expand services offered to our members. Medical stop loss sales increased 86% over last year, reflecting disciplined pricing, strong underwriting, and continued success in winning attractive business. We continue to benefit from our scale and capabilities in this market while maintaining our focus on risk-adjusted returns. This quarter, we expanded our suite of health solutions to provide differentiated support for employers and members. Through a new partnership, we're providing access to clinical trials for people facing complex health conditions.

Enhancing the solutions available to support access to care, improve health outcomes, and help people through serious health challenges remains a core part of our strategy. In dental, we continue to focus on improving profitability through ongoing portfolio management activities across our government business, growth in our commercial business, disciplined expense management, and continued execution. While there is still work to do, we continue to make progress. Turning to slide seven, we're continuing to perform well against our medium-term objectives. Underlying EPS growth was 13%, above our target of 10%. Underlying ROE was 19.1%, approaching our target of 20%. Our dividend ratio was 48%, within our target range of 40%-50%. Supported by these strong fundamentals, our diversified business strategy strengthened both asset management and insurance and our industry-leading LICAT ratio, we remain well positioned to continue delivering sustainable, broad-based earnings growth over the medium term.

I'll now turn it over to Tim to go through the financials for the quarter.

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide 9, we delivered strong second quarter results with underlying net income of CAD 1.12 billion and underlying earnings per share of CAD 2.02. Results were driven by strong contributions from Canada, Asia, and the U.S. and continued momentum in Sun Life Asset Management. Reported net income was CAD 1.01 billion. The difference between underlying and reported net income was primarily driven by acquisition and integration related costs in SLC in the U.S., intangible asset amortization, and modestly unfavorable net market impacts. Market impacts reflected yield curve movements during the quarter, real estate returns that were positive but below long-term expectations, and strong public equity market performance in the quarter. Turning to slide 10. Sun Life Asset Management underlying net income of $262 million increased 4% year-over-year, mainly driven by earnings growth at SLC.